Question 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Genre Conventions:

Drama - A drama is a film that deals a lot with human emotions. They are usually very serious, tense and portray realistic characters, of which the protagonist is usually in conflict with themselves.

Romance – A romance is a film that deals with relationships. They are usually between two people, a man and a woman and portray one better off than the other, of which causes problems but resolves itself at the end.

Trailer – A trailer shows the key moments from the film accompanied by music, captions and voiceovers explaining the plot of the film and introducing the director and/or actors to the audience with the title of the film and release date near the end.

Poster – A poster has a large title, showing off the name of the film with a picture and colours that draws the attention of the audience accompanied with names of famous actors or director and persuasive language from critics to intrigue the audience.

Magazine – A magazine has a mast head for the name of the magazine, an image and colours to attract the audience with text to show articles and larger text to show main articles and possibly other images to accompanies these to attract an audiences attention.

By using the codes and conventions used in Trainspotting, the inspiration to my trailer, it’s easy to see we followed the path they took but made some changes to keep the trailer original for us and the poster/magazine original to me. Both trailers show key scenes in the play and explain the plot of the film. Trainspotting is dramatic-comedy and so explained there film with comedic scenes to entertain the audience, whereas our Wonderland film is a dramatic-romance and so our film explains the story with romantic scenes to entertain the audience. Trainspotting uses the main characters voice as non-diegetic sound explaining why he made his choices to take drugs with a positive spin, keeping it more comedic, whereas we use our main characters non-diegetic sound to explain why he chose to take drugs with a negative spin, keeping it more dramatic. Back when Trainspotting was released, there was no famous actor in the film and so they did not promote Ewan McGregor more than just the main character that is what we did with William Derry in our trailer, we kept everyone as notorious as each other and just focussed on who the main characters were.

In Trainspotting’s poster we see the title of the film, the cast, a critic’s reviews and a promotion to the director. I followed the majority of that but the cast in Trainspotting were separated for the photo and then photo shopped together again, where as in mine I wanted to show my characters together posing for the camera. Also a unique feature of Trainspotting’s poster was to have the characters names alongside there photos and I used that for mine to give the audience more information towards the characters.

Empire’s front cover of their magazine promoting Trainspotting shows the main actor in the film as their main article with text anchoring its purpose. I followed this example because it is the most common layout to a magazine main article. Empire magazine uses Ewan McGregor’s image and covers up their Mast Head because it is such a popular magazine people will still know what it says, the magazine I have created is not as popular and so needs its name to be seen because it is still growing in popularity.

A2 Media Poster: 'Wonderland'

A2 Media Magazine: 'Exposure'

A2 Media Trailer: 'Wonderland'

Poster and Magazine for Trainspotting and This is England

A magazine cover is free publicity, given by the publishers of the article. You get free publicity for your movie, they get money for selling their magazine with your brand on the front. The bigger the film is going to be the bigger the magazine that will use your product. This is why a High Concept film like Batman; with almost a guaranteed success rate, a star-studded cast, a big time director and a large sum of money funding it will get more publicity than a film like Trainspotting, This is England or our film, Wonderland that are British films, with a high risk success rate, a British relatively unknown cast, a successful director and a limited sum of money. In both magazine covers we see the main actors of the both films, Ewan McGregor and Thomas Turgoose, looking at the camera and acting as their characters. However as you can see Trainspotting's cover is a photo of Ewan McGregor by Empire and calls it 'The Year's Hippest Movie'. Compare that British film's magazine cover to he This is England magazine cover and you see it's a sketched drawing of Thomas Turgoose simply saying 'The This is England Issue'. I would prefer my film Wonderland to be getting offers from Empire instead of Little White Lies because it means that our film will attract a bigger audience due to more people buying and reading Empire.

Posters are advertising and will cost the producer money to produce and distribute. However unlike a magazine cover you can distribute your product where ever you want and grab the attention of a wider audience with a well placed poster. Also as a producer you can create what you want for your poster. Usually with low budget British films the emphasis of the poster is on the cast, introducing the characters and actors to the audience with characteristics that would appeal to the audience. With Trainspotting we see the five main actors posing as their characters to attract an audience who will find at least one of them interesting enough to go and watch the film. With This is England we see the whole main cast together as a group again positioned and acting as the characters they are playing. This is usually done because their is no main star in the film so their is no need to show the main character by themselves and to get a wider response with multiple actors on show. If Trainspotting was a new film out now, the posters would have Ewan McGregor as the main picture with Robert Carlyle possibly in the background. With the film poster I am creating I would again like to go with Trainspotting, individual shots of the cast; Will, Elle and myself in character either with a white background or a This is England urban background.

Second Draft of Trailer: Wonderland

Following on from the feed back we got from our first draft of Wonderland we created a redraft of the Wonderland Trailer:

This trailer made it more clear what the plot of the film was and how Alice died in the car crash.
You also were able to see more of me as the drug dealer which explained why Will's character turned to drugs.
We created a re-do of this trailer with an added voice over from Will's character:

This shows the depression Will's character has fallen into and through the words you can tell Elle's character Alice has died and Will's character Rob is grieving, which again explains why he turned to drugs.

Improvements for ‘Wonderland’ the first draft

·         The audience wants to see the plot of the film more.

·         We need to show how Alice has died, in a car crash.

·         We need to introduce my character more, the drug dealer.

·         We need to make it clear Rob has turned to drugs, through his depression.

·         The audience wants a voice over to explain the film.

·         A voice over during the beginning scene with Rob.

We can show Rob’s depression and that my character is a drug dealer by a scene where the two of us meet and I take him to ‘Wonderland’.

We could explain the storyline more and show Alice has died in a car crash with a voice over at the beginning of the film.

We will do more editing to show that the drugs have taken Will to ‘Wonderland’ where he can see Alice again.